Pulp & Paper Company Cuts Energy Costs using Data Historian

Quotables: "By making use of the data collected by the Data Historian on one machine in one mill, we were able to save $20,000 on energy costs in one month alone,"

said Francois Ruel, Automation Project Manager for Cascades, Inc.

Application Description

With the cost of energy required to power the various operating units tripling over the past few years, Cascades needed to find a better way to track the mills' energy usage. With the help of the high-speed, real-time data collection available through ProSoft Technology's Data Historian module, Cascades has found a way to improve accuracy in reporting and identify where mills can make the best use of their energy to reduce costs.

The data collection capabilities of the Data Historian have allowed Cascades to collect and process data from areas they couldn't get to before. The heart of the Data Historian is ECHO (Embedded Component Historian Object), a product of OSIsoft. The Data Historian collects the data at the machine level and then immediately makes it available to their entire enterprise.

The original test site in their mill located in Kingsley Falls, Quebec, was such a success they plan to expand into 30-40 other mills globally.

"Now we generate reports that help us track performance daily and are well on our way to achieving our goal of 2% reduction in energy usage annually,"said Ruel.